Actually i think he just missed the decimal point after the 6.

But maybe lots of people at the embassy died, purely by coincidence of course, but of totally unrelated causes, just at the moment the missile struck.

The German news, you know ...

Nah, you pretend to be apathetic, but you're taking time out of your day to go defend him. If you genuinely didn't care, you wouldn't be here.

In reality, you defend him because you like what he's doing. You're only pivoting to indifference because you're either unable to articulate a persuasive case or would be embarrassed by stating your views publically.

Is it the Muslim travel ban you support? Or pardoning/celebrating war criminals? Separating migrant children from their parents? Abusing power & obstructing justice? Deficit spending to benefit billionaires? Is it that you believe climate change is a Chinese conspiracy? Women shouldn't have reproductive autonomy? Or something else?

You might as well admit what you're into. It's transparent that your views fall somewhere along these lines. Or if I'm wrong and you're genuinely apathetic, stop carrying water for someone you don't care about.

It is a problem not just in the US.

It is a problem across the western world.

It is a problem of the disconnect between the political classes and increasingly large chunks of the population.

Perhaps you failed to notice that the Brexit thread and this thread are both in the same forum that has the same members?

Au contraire, the problem is the political classes are producing populists who appeal to increasingly large chunks of the population.

With the other large chunks of the population doing....nothing? Sometimes the lack of reactions is disturbing.

Don't feed the alt, he'll get Loz-t soon

Populism is an easy sell, though. People want easy answers to their less-than-perfect situation and the blame game is seductively effective.

Countering the easy sell, even with hard facts, logic and truths, is much harder because people don't want to face up to it.

oh good.

So the Dems could find somebody to beat Trump if they wanted to, but they don't want to?

Calling arguments (and people) populist is also a seductively effective alternative to actually listening to them

The problem is that hard facts, logic and truths are a hard sell because they only reveal that the world isn't as black and white as some people would like it to be. Anybody claiming all the hard facts, logic and truths are on their side is living in delusion. And this independently of where they stand politically.

That must be it, most likely.

Or maybe we're just talking about two different incidents.

That's not what I said, though, is it.

I'm not calling anyone anything. I was describing a political approach which seems to have become more widespread.

I also didn't say that all the hard facts, logic and truths are on any particular side, either.

Nobody can lay claim to them, they are just there. It's up to the population, or enough thereof, to accept them, want to change them and vote in some semblance of party who they trust to deal with them in the best way they can. If that's Trump then good luck to him.

If you think people aren't at least dabbling in populism in this day and age then I have to ask whether your accusation of "delusion" should be levelled a bit closer to home.

Trump is a model populist but would he really have stood a chance against a good opponent? I don't think so.

That is a point that hasn't been made though..moving the goalposts might be very tempting but it's intellectually dishonest.

I am not so sure about that. The appeal of "populism" (I use quotation marks as it seem that some terms rub a few people the wrong way) is very strong. There are other (societal) explanations that go deeper than not having a significantly better alternative.

Irrelevant, as it seems that Bloomberg will buy the nomination, he is already third in the polls.
Maybe he will succeed in buying the voters too?

At least he is spending his own money so he will not have donors pushing for favours.

Alas, there are no good opponents, so he will win again.

Tom

Somewhat naive as nothing is assured in politics!
It is unusual for a President to not win a second term so one could say it is likely.

So far Trump has proven to be pretty harmless from the European viewpoint.
He has not started any wars, his threats against NATO and on tariffs for auto manufacturers have proven to be just rhetoric so far.
Despite his support for fossil fuels he has failed to stop the steady US march to renewable energy and to reduction of harmful emissions.
Despite his promises to stop endless wars and bring the troops home, they are still all over the world, hopefully attempting to keep the peace and avoiding the need for European troops.
His tweets and speeches provide us with daily amusement.

So another term would be OK.

It seems Iran has backed down for now, giving Trump an almost complete (if only temporary) victory.

Iran (people and government) will - of course - never forget this and it will be very difficult to bring peace forward in this region in the next decades.

As often with Trump, it was one step forward and two steps backwards.


In other news, Trump will be taking part in the WEF in Davos again this year, after having to cancel the trip last year (because of the Shutdown, IIRC).

That'll be fun.

Trump has got away with this murder without any significant reaction from Iran but is Iran now doing anything different than before?

Iran's major goal is to get US troops out of the ME, this coincides with Trump's goal to bring the troops home so is likely to be successful.